Best “performances,'' however, are given by the movie's almost agonizingly beautiful historical settings -- luxurious households, rich architecture, furnishings, ornaments, draperies, fineries and such are often more captivating than the hushed tones of the lovers. [17 Sept 1993, Daily Notebook, p.C1]

Ghobadi infuses his movie with a humor that can almost be called Seinfeldian, and it's this mix of laughter with tears that gives Marooned in Iraq its big impact.

The studio made a great film.

An outstanding gangster film -- loaded with style and ambience -- that boasts one of Christopher Walken's finest performances. [28 Aug 1991, p.E3]

Economically and stunningly, Almodovar combines a high sense of style with a deep sense of humanity, along with a touch of erotic beauty that has always characterized his work.

It's impossible not to be moved and shocked by The Last Days, the haunting documentary about five Hungarian Jews who survived Hitler's "final solution" to exterminate the Jewish people.

The Past makes conventional movies feel artificial. Watching the characters interact in this movie feels like "Here is real life," and real life just happens to be strangely compelling.

Each element combines to make Glory one of the few Civil War movies that reach into the very guts of that conflict. [12 Jan 1990, p.E1]

Though specific to the stories of its central characters, this documentary is as complicated as life. It’s happy, sad and uncertain — genuinely moving and uplifting, yet never reassuring.

The experience of Southpaw is rather like seeing the truth behind the cliches, revived in all their pain and power to surprise.

An ideal introduction to Toback's output as well as a welcome elucidation for longtime fans. Apart from those worthy functions, The Outsider is also shrewdly made, illuminating its subject in a variety of settings and, at times, subtly assuming the style of Toback's films.

Delivers a full emotional palette without undue sentimentalizing.

You needn't have colorful Italian relatives, like myself, to enjoy this boisterous and warm-hearted film, which sidesteps cliche while embracing the hope and love in loony dysfunctional families everywhere.

Extraordinary and beautiful.

Kore-eda weaves these images and others, building a multilayered fugue that contemplates death, asks if mourning ever truly ends and addresses the ephemeral nature of love, family and home. Everything we value and use to define and frame our lives, he suggests, is always at risk.

An original, inspired piece of work.

A Hologram for the King has great energy, and also a languorous, lived-in quality.

Potent.

With Diane, as in life, it feels like nothing’s going on, but everything’s going on.

As a film, "Levees" is a significant and exhaustive achievement. Although it can be argued that it might have been even more effective if it had been edited down a bit, the power of its human stories compensates for whatever minor flaws it has.

Moviegoers will love or hate Oliver Stone and his politics until the end of time. With well-made movies such as Snowden, though, his skill as a filmmaker becomes much harder for the detractors to debate.

This is a movie that you will admire both for its courage and its creativity.

It's not enough to say that Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino's best movie. It's the first movie of his artistic maturity, the film his talent has been promising for more than 15 years.

The animation, sparkling and graceful, also ranks as the studio's best traditional work in ages.

A gentle movie. It’s valedictory, with a sense of the ephemeral nature of life, the inevitability of regret, and the bittersweetness of looking back on past happiness.

Not a heist film, a thriller, a twisted romance, a film noir or a character study, but a unique concoction that bends all these genres to its vision.

It is an exhilaration from beginning to end. It's the movie equivalent of that rare sort of novel where you find yourself checking to see how many pages are left and hoping there are more, not fewer.

Kurosawa's film is heavyweight fare: disturbing, slightly over the top, but satisfying, like a rich meal with a powerful aftertaste.